What personal data does Microsoft Bing collect about your children?

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There are many search engines besides Google. One of them is called Bing and is owned by Microsoft. Bing offers both traditional internet search and the artificial intelligence ChatGPT. As with many other search engines, these services also collect personal data.

How Bing chat works

On the Bing website, you can choose between asking AI or searching the traditional way. It is the menu button “Chat” that allows you to ask artificial intelligence for answers. Here, it’s the ChatGPT that answers you.

We asked it if it’s risky to use Snapchat’s “My AI” because it is the same “ChatGPT” that answers there too. What Bing, i.e., ChatGPT, answered is seen in the image below. It has rephrased some sentences taken from various web pages.

When ChatGPT arrived in 2022, it was updated until the previous year. But the ChatGPT inside Bing uses fresh web pages to formulate its answers for you.

It’s very impressive how ChatGPT can formulate answers, but it’s important to remember that:

• Artificial intelligence can come up with “facts” that are completely wrong.
• Artificial intelligence collects personal data when you ask it questions.

How to get started with Bing

To use Bing and its artificial intelligence, you need a Microsoft account. When creating the account, you must fill in the date of birth and year. You must also approve:

• The Service Agreement (16,000 words)
• The Privacy Statement (3,500 words)
• Privacy for young people (3,000 words)
• Terms of use (1,600 words)

The terms come with a warning: “You should not rely on the Online Services and you should not use the Online Services for advice of any kind. Your use of the Online Services is at your own risk.”

We wrote a date of birth that corresponds to a ten-year-old child. It asked us whether we were a child or a parent.

You can thus give consent for your child to create a Microsoft account. Indirectly, you are hereby accepting that Microsoft, Bing, and ChatGPT collect personal data about your children when they use the services.

As a parent, you must have a Microsoft account to receive the email from your child to give your consent.

There are some parental settings for Microsoft in this app. Also, read about parental settings here.

By the way, Microsoft can’t know if a child under 13 has lied about their age to avoid parental consent.

The consent makes it lawful to collect personal data from children

It is illegal for companies to collect personal data from children under the age of 13 unless they obtain parental consent.

There are a number of apps and social media that have set 13 years as the absolute age limit in their terms, then parents cannot give consent to younger children. Microsoft, on the other hand, has chosen to allow parents to give consent.

Bing collects personal data

Microsoft collects this:

• Your geographical location
• IP address
• Unique IDs in cookies
• Browser Setup
• Date and time
• What you type in the search
• Name
• E-mail address
• Birthday
• How you use Microsoft products and services
• Which websites you visit
• What games you play
• “Sometimes we also get data about you from others.”
• “When we use this information, we may link information from multiple sources.”

Microsoft employees listen to your voice

If you use voice search, your voice is sent to Microsoft, so the voice is not just processed in isolation inside the browser, app, or phone.

Microsoft writes that its employees can listen to your voice to improve the services, if you have consented to it. The question is whether you have given such consent without even noticing it.

What is meant by additional information?

Microsoft’s privacy statement states that the company collects additional information about you if you use Bing Desktop or Bing Toolbar and choose to participate in the Bing Experience Improvement Program. For example, Microsoft then collects which websites you visit.

Search history is not deleted

The browser of Microsoft is called Microsoft Edge. The privacy policy states that the browser collects and uses data from your search activity. This is what you search for and what links you click.

The privacy statement also states that when you’re signed in to a Microsoft account, you can clear your search history. However, the information is not deleted from Microsoft’s search history.

Subcontractors get to know information about the pages you visit

If you start using the Edge browser, the usual pop-up about the use of cookies will appear. It says that Microsoft allows subcontractors to collect information about the pages you visit.

It also says that Microsoft “connects your activity on our websites to your social media profiles.”

Personal data thus goes both ways between social media and Microsoft.

Age Limits

• In Snapchat and ChatGPT, the age limit is 13. Children under the age of 18 must have parental consent.
• Using Bing, or ChatGPT in Bing, does not appear to have a clear age rating in the terms, but Microsoft is required by law to obtain parental consent if children under 13 are to use the services. And Microsoft does that when you authenticate your child’s account with yours.

Tips:

• You shouldn’t share secrets with an AI, because you’re not only talking to a machine but also to a global computer company that uses the information to influence you in the next round.

(A longer version is available here in Norwegian. Translated by Ratan Samadder)